Johnboy3434 said:What differentiates one age from another? Also, I've read up about how the DC authorities devised the Multiverse system in an attempt to keep the core superheroes young, and the deal with moving the "main" continuity from Earth-Two to Earth-One during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But, I'm not entirely sure when this big shift is supposed to take place as I read the Batman and Superman comics. At what point do I suddenly clear my mind of what happened prior and begin with a new slate? Will they announce it in the comics, or will I need to know ahead of time?
Okay, first of all you've got to understand a few things:
The various "Ages" are terms which were retroactively applied. As was the whole "Earth-1/Earth-2" thing. I doubt either term will ever pop up in the actual body of a story before the Crisis storyline.
Its really all a shill, because the bottom line is you don't need to care. The whole Earth-1/Earth-2 thing happened because the writers at DC were geeks and they realized there were inconsistencies in their stories. For some stupid reason comic authors have this idea that their universes must be one big, internally consistent tapestry, so they decided that--rather than just admitting they were goofs and finalizing a truth later (which would be the SMART thing)--they would come up with this convoluted "there's two Earths" theory and try to shoehorn everything into one or the other (for comparisons sake, it would be like trying to explain away Artoo-Detoo's powers of flight by claiming Attack of the Clones took place on Earth-2). It's worth noting that no other type of writer thinks like a comic book writer (thank god!)
As for the whole "Ages" thing, there actually is some legitimacy to that. The term refers both to the state of the industry financially and in general to sweeping periods of change in content and approaches. There was a Superman article I read once that had a great breakdown, but I don't think its online anymore.
Basically, as far as superheroes were concerned, the gist was this: Golden Age stories tended to have very straightforward, black and white morality. The hero is right, the villain is an evil jerk who deserves to have a house fall on him, and no questions asked. Starting with the silver age things got more complex--you could agree with the villain, and even if you didn't you could sometimes still question the hero's actions. Things were becoming less back and white. By the bronze age the trend had gone so far that sometimes black WAS white.
The bottom line is that the terminology is fun to know, but not at all essential to reading and enjoying the comics.